I recently had a will drawn up. Making a will was something I always thought I’d do “one day” when I was “an adult” and had “adult things.” Like a husband and children and assets. Welp, one out of three ain’t bad! But being the Planner that I am, I had my badass lawyers (I have lawyers! Another adult milestone.) draw up the paperwork. And then there were the decisions that had to be made.

Who got my stuff? (HA HA HA JOKE’S ON YOU I HAVE NO STUFF!) How and when would it be distributed? If my brain was somehow turned into scrambled eggs, how long should I be kept on life support? All of these questions were relatively simple for me to answer. And then came the big one.

If I die, who gets Kiddo?

It was something I hadn’t really thought of before.

Leaving your stuff to people was one thing. Who would best be suited to inherit the six generation of family photos I’ve organized? Who would want my amazing shoes? Who would most appreciate my collection of CDs alphabetically-arranged in their 90’s CD towers AND PROMISE NEVER TO SELL THEM TO DISC REPLAY? Who would take care of my three dumb fire-bellied toads?

Just look at that face. Of… either Henry, Gus or Helen, I don’t know, they all look the same to me. Is that racist?

That stuff was easy enough, mostly because in all honestly I really don’t care. Box up the photos, throw out the shoes and I was lying about having the CDs (who still has CDs?). But choosing who should raise your child in the case of your untimely death is a whole other bag of meat.

Who would be best? And who would even agree to do it if asked? And who should be passed over? And who would be offended if they weren’t asked?

This isn’t like choosing a Maid of Honor at your wedding. Worrying about offending someone cannot come into consideration here. That decision eliminated a few people from my Maybe List right off the bat. I mean, I love you and all, but you and I both know just no.

But what if no one agrees? What if after countless hours of weighing the pros and cons of each individual person in my life and narrowing it down to The One, they say “Yeah, thanks, but um. No way.” Should I just find a tough, cold careerwoman long-lost cousin and let her find out via late-night phone call that she’s inherited a baby? A la Diane Keaton in 1987’s Baby Boom?

And then her equally tough, cold businessman husband, Harold Ramis, will be all, “J.C., I love you but I didn’t sign up for this,” and then leave her? And then (spoiler alert) after a series of hilarious misunderstandings and struggles, she and Kiddo will move to the country and start a small business selling the baby food applesauce she makes herself from fresh ingredients? That doesn’t sound so bad, right?

Ok, this is kind of unrelated, but check out the official movie poster for the Spanish version of Baby Boom:

I love how movie titles totally change when marketed for another country. Here, “Baby Boom” becomes “Baby, You Are Worth So Much.” I’m guessing because they didn’t really have a post WWII baby boom in Latin America, so the title just doesn’t hold the same dazzle factor. And they really softened up Diane Keaton with that dress instead of that power suit. FASCINATING.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah. So how do you decide who gets your kid?

I spend a lot of time thinking about how I want to raise my daughter. What I’ll teach her about religion. And family. And love. And sex! And tell her all about her great-grandparents. And how to cook the few things I can cook. How to throw a softball and a good punch. And not to let anyone tell you that Red Lobster or Disney World aren’t awesome because THEY ARE. And how to speak Spanish like a Paraguayan campesino and how to be a female in this world and how to travel light and how, above all, how to not take life too seriously. But as much as I would want her to be raised exactly as I would raise her myself, I realize that it’s not as important as the basics. That she would be loved and taken care of in a stable environment. And really, that’s about all anyone needs.

In the end, the choice was pretty clear. I asked. And they agreed without hesitation, as I knew they would.

Now I just have to work on that not-dying part.

I’d be interested to hear when and how people choose their Kid Inheritors. Was it relatively easy or not so much? Let me know! Here, or on Facebook, or on the Twitter.

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9 thoughts on “Choosing a Kid Inheritor”

Interesting considerations you’ve presented — writing a will is, indeed, serious business. Your post, however, had me wondering why you didn’t choose your parents as “kid inheritors.” Since you live with them, it would seem natural for them to raise your child if you were to pass away.

Good attention to detail, Amar! 🙂 My parents are of course the very first, and very best, choice. I had to choose a second-in-line, however, in case something were to happen to them, since they are older. Or if we were all three to go down in the same tragic bass fishing accident at the same time.

Ugh, a will is that thing at the top of my To-Do list that I keep ignoring. We too are wavering on the Kid Inheritor question, which is part of the reason (the rest is inertia and the desire to avoid paying a lawyer. Silly, I know.). Our other main consideration, besides love and stability, is location – one of our choices would have the kids living in a place we don’t particularly like. I think we have it narrowed down finally, but I’m kind of afraid to ask our top contender because what if they say no? I don’t think that’s likely but I’m afraid of it anyway because we really don’t have many options to begin with.

So, that settles it – we all have to live forever. Or at least until our kids turn 18.

RE paying a lawyer: we’re using RocketLawyer.com. F has been handling most of the details, but the website walks you through all the questions and I think there might be a real-life-lawyer consult option too. You can create a free account to get started, then I think it’s $20/month with the option to drop back to the free level anytime.

It’s such a difficult question. Our first choice is also my parents, since they’re younger than my husband’s parents and they live close to us, so hopefully it would be the least amount of upset in my daughter’s life. But because they’re older, we have my sister-in-law and her husband as the backups. It’s hard because my daughter’s life would be very different growing up in their house instead of ours, but my sister-in-law adores her and that’s what matters most. We were ready with third- and fourth-level choices, too, even though the will doesn’t even ask for that. Because, like you, I also think about what would happen if all the adults in the family were killed in the same freak bass fishing accident (in my head, it’s a bus crash on a day trip to Atlantic City, but still).